Andrew Offutt - The Tower of Death

“The same as before,” Gisivald said at last, with moroseness.

“Aye. Men tracelessly slain-save that one is not there. Rechiaric.”

“It’s a broken body we’re after finding among the rocks by the water’s edge,” Cormac offered. “Mayhap that’s your missing man.”

The Sueves went to the place along the quay on which stood the lighthouse, and examined the body.

“By his garb and accoutering, that’s Rechiaric,” Gisivald opined in a dull voice. “Eye of Wotan, little else is left to know him by!”

He lifted hard-clenched fists to the sky, and swore bitterly by other gods the Church dismissed as heathen devils. Cormac, impassively listening, took note with pleasure that any power the Dead God’s priests might have among these men seemed scarcely to go deep. The Goths had imposed the Arian doctrine once, as a matter of form; however, naught Cormac heard had ever implied that forced acceptance had lasted long-or greatly impressed.

The man Rechiaric’s shapeless corpse was wrapped in a mantle over-bright for a shroud. Scarlet and green, the Gael mused, were colours to be alive in. Five spare horses the Sueves had brought along, which now their comrades would never ride. The body went across the saddle of one, lashed in place. The others, cold in the high tower, could be fetched down later.

“Four horses, and four strangers to take before the king,” Irnic said. “It’s an omen, clear as sunlight! Who says nay?”

He was asking his comrades. It was Cormac who made answer.

“We will accompany ye,” he agreed. “Not as prisoners, though; we’ll be retaining our arms. Else must ye take us along as ye take that one.”

He jerked a thumb at the horribly shapeless package across the fifth spare horse.

“It’s not impossible,” Gisivald said.

“Not impossible, no.” Irnic surveyed the four strangers. “Unnecessary is what I’d call it. There be twenty aboard yon dark ship, by my reckoning. Twenty of us remain here to watch them, leaving ten or a dozen to-escort our guests. Who have not the look of riders born.”

Cormac disputed him not, and ignored Suevic chuckles. A good man, he thought, who’d observed his ship from the lofty window. Then a sudden thought and idea flashed upon the Gael. At first it seemed madness; yet it might work. There was none in this distant, largely isolated land able to prove it a lie… Clodia had nerve and ability to play the part… Surely the lass deserved a better time than she’d been having.

Besides, it might somehow be useful. Cormac turned.

“Ivarr, send the Lady Clodia ashore. We ride to audience with the king, and it’s fain, I am to present her. There be no reason why a noblewoman should kick her heels in the scuppers.”

Ivarr, looking as if the world had turned upside down, nevertheless obeyed.

Clodia joined them in a seeming daze. At sight of her damp, sandy clothes, and the tangled mare’s nest of her hair, Cormac was less sure she could carry it off; although the sea-crossing they had made would amply explain her appearance. He’d make assertion he had disguised her as a tavern bawd for some reason.

The story was thin, but it would do. Clodia-“the lady Clodia”-must convince by manner alone.

The Sueves were rocking with laughter at the three Danes’ attempts to mount the tall Gothic war-horses. In their cold homeland was naught but ponies. Nor was the stirrup known among these men of the western world. The Persians had long used it, having borrowed the invention from the fierce Asian nomads they fought incessantly, but all of forty years would pass ere the great horse-general Belisarius would make it standard among the forces of the Empire. More decades would pass while the idea spread through the western kingdoms, until a simple iron device became the seed of the way of life that would replace Rome’s. In the mean time Hrolf, Knud and big Hrut Bear-slayer provided the Sueves with a deal of merriment in their efforts to mount.

Their concealing mirth gave Cormac a moment to speak to Clodia. Few and imperative were the words he used.

“Carry this off, girl, and it’s linen and unborn lamb’s wool ye’ll be walking in, belike. Fail, and it’s tears of blood ye’ll be weeping.”

Clodia blinked. She’d spent the better part of a tormenting week on the sea. She’d grown to hate it. Too, there had been trying times both previously and after. Her head ached, and her stomach felt like a snail curled within her. The girl from Nantes was a far, far stretch from her best. Even so… he must be thinking her very slow. She forced thought from her exhausted brain.

“I’ll carry it off,” she whispered, with a coolness of voice and mien that indicated she was already entering her new role.

After a smile of grim approval, Cormac applied himself to getting a leg across a dun charger his clumsiness made restive. He performed better than any of the Danes for all that he was long years out of practice: Eirrin had tall splendid horses, and Cormac had ridden as a boy.

At last mounting in a bound, he clamped his right leg tightly while he lifted Clodia to perch before him. They set out, the Sueves matching their pace to the abilities of the strangers. They moved slowly. Within the narrow extended tongue of forest whose tip ended barely a stone’s throw from the towering lighthouse, Wulfhere Hausakliufr watched them leave.

“Hel gnaw their bones!” he snarled. “The sows’ abortions, the bow-legged sons of mares! That I let them ride away with my shipmates under guard! Nay, we can still make a raid to fetch them back, lads! This forest allows us cover even to the city wall. None knows we be here. With such advantage, can we not strike and win against ten times our number? What say ye?”

From his score of slayers came a fierce acceding rumble like a storm’s first warning. Natheless, some shook their heads. Wulfhere glowered about, ice-eyed beneath thick brows like flame.

“Surt’s burning sword! What ails you holdouts? D’ye fear Cormac will be slain and we make trouble? Small likelihood of that. He’s not bound, nor even disarmed.”

“And that’s why, captain,” Makki Grey-gull stuck out his lip gloomily. “They four went not like prisoners. Think ye Cormac had accompanied them with never a blow struck, an they had not spoken him fair? What’s in his mind I cannot say. I’m just thinking we should wait and see.”

Jostein the Grinner supported him. “He brought the wench ashore- Lady Clodia. He’d not have done that were he thinking of battle. He’s some trick under his helm, sure. He shouted as much-at the top of his voice.”

Wulfhere simmered with ire, and clutched his huge ax for self-control until his knuckles were as fleshless. And saw the force of their arguments.

“Well, this much is true,” he grumbled without pleasure. “Can any man talk his way out of such a situation; the Wolf’s he. Nor will we help his case do we rush in hewing.”

“Aye!” Makki said eagerly. “An those horse-riders intend murder-” (this from a man with eight lives to answer for in the land of his birth) “-there’s no preventing it now. But we can take such a vengeance that all the world will know of it, beginning with that lot.” He gestured at the twenty Sueves between them and Raven . “With Ivarr and the lads aboard, we outnumber ‘em twofold, and have ’em from two sides. We can crush them as grain milled in a quern. Or capture most living, to ransom Cormac and the rest, an that seems the better course. Those be their king’s own hearth-companions, Wulfhere. It’s good bargaining-counters they’d make.”

Agreement was upon the others by this time. Wulfhere gnawed strands of his fiery beard, not liking to wait, and yet aware this was but his notorious lack of patience.